BACKGROUND TO THIS DOCUMENTARY PHOTO REPORT: In September, 2012, FRANCIS UMENDU ODUPUTE, an artist cum journalist with The NIGERIAN OBSERVER, a government-owned newspaper in Benin City, Edo State of Nigeria, began an investigation into an over-populated, poorly maintained and yearly-flooded primary school in a fast developing community he resides with his wife, three children and a ward. He had enrolled his ward in the densely populated public primary school - that was how he got to know more about the school’s problems and became bothered that for the 12th year running, children in this primary school had been suffering from flooding and poor sanitation, water-related diseases, over-crowding and psychological traumas, as the school and indeed their community, Evbuotubu/Iguedaiye, in Egor LGA of Edo State, was alleged to have been neglected and marginalized by successive governments of the State.

Mr. Odupute courageously published a serialized, pro-poor investigative story on the demographic, environmental and WASH situation in Evbuotubu Primary School and the community roads in The Nigerian Observer Newspapers, between 2014 and 2015. The journalist also embarked on few strategic media interfaces and dialogue with Evbuotubu community leaders and youths on the need to increase their cry to the State government.

Are there any queers in the theater tonight?
Get them up against the wall!
There's one in the spotlight, he don't look right to me
Get him up against the wall!
That one looks Jewish!
And that one's a coon!
Who let all of this riff-raff into the room?
There's one smoking a joint
And another with spots!
If I had my way,
I'd have all of you shot!

Roger Waters - Pink Floyd’s The Wall

The Donald Trump campaign has made it impossible to ignore the Nazi analogy. His rallies summon memories of the fascist movement in 1930’s Germany. He demands that his followers raise their right hands to take a pledge of loyalty, recalling the infamous Nazi salute. He instructs his security forces to remove from the gathering anyone who fails to fall in line, many of them unmistakably with darker skins than the loyal brood.

To anyone of my generation who remembers Pink Floyd’s epic rock opera, a metaphor for the Third Reich on British soil, the analogy could not be clearer.

I am well aware Donald Trump isn’t a conservative. What’s more, I’ve seen no indication that he’s interested in adopting a consistent constitutionally conservative philosophy. He’s the personification of the “random walk” brought to politics.

But none of that matters.

For our purposes we don’t need James Madison. The fact that Trump’s background is closer to that of Ashley Madison is entirely irrelevant to the tremendous service he can perform for conservatives.

What Donald Trump understands is winning and winning’s corollary: Getting even. And that’s why he’s the perfect candidate to give conservatives a real chance of achieving our greatest victory in the last 50 years.

And that’s where two words become crucial for my vote: Term limits.

If Trump adds term limits to his signature issue of immigration then I’m instantly a Trumpista. Term limits is another perfect issue for Trump and his eclectic assembly of voters who are fed up with a self–serving, unresponsive and corrupt political establishment.

A New York Times article, “Why Spin Is Good for Democracy,” caught my attention like a large pile of cow dung on the trail, or rather front page. Unlike the author David Greenberg, Rutgers University Professor of History and Journalism and Media Studies and Who Knows What Else, I loathe spin. The article is a fine example of mind-numbing spinning of spin itself, as if we all needed that.

“Spin, on the other hand, has an impish quality; it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Spin winks at its own truth stretching. It signals to the journalists who report it and the audiences who consume it that they’re getting a partial, even insincere, version of events. But it also suggests that this grazing of the truth is no grounds for alarm, because, after all, politics has never been the realm of dispassionate truth-telling.”

Likely, Greenberg is working a spinner’s vein of paid speeches and publications, ever pushing spin as some kind of wonderful thing for democracy in an onslaught of blather from the comfy bastion of his buffered academic sinecure. His essay might as well have been called, “Why Nonsense Is Good for Democracy.”

It is nearly impossible for me to fathom those like Greenberg who actually enjoyed watching former White House Press Secretary James Carney (or now Josh Earnest, though not a journalist) blatantly lie to the press and public and openly display just how corrupt journalists like him could be.

The European Space Organisation envisages a grand project: a village on the Moon, by 2030.

Supported by robots that mine and process minerals for the ISS (Intl. Space Station) kind of derivative to be placed there, including 3D-printers for the manufacture of tools, etc. The whole thing is thought to be a stepping stone to the planet Mars.

What appears to be missing from the project is an appreciation and understanding of the facts; the Moon is no more of a hospitable place than Mars. In fact, both are rather inhospitable.

The Moon

For more than 40 years now, mankind has not set foot on the Moon – and for good reason. Apart from lacking any appreciable atmosphere (no water, oxygen, nitrogen, or even carbon dioxide), it takes an enormous amount of (earthly) resources to get there and back. Yes, the feat has been achieved but to what avail?

Rock samples brought back from the missions to the Moon did not significantly enlarge our knowledge of the universe nor our understanding of this planet’s environ.

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To speak out against the way things were done in colonial times was to risk a charge of sedition. The American Revolution changed all that, giving people the right to freedom of speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

The comic book, “Schoolchildren Battle Malaria and Other Diseases,” was created and designed by Francis Odupute, an award-winning artist and journalist, and his MediaBfi team in Nigeria. (Click on Image to Download your FREE copy!)